The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Religion
The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Materialism; Philosophy and religion; Psychology
That man should be uninterruptedly happy, it would be requisite that his
powers were infinite; it would require that to his mobility he joined
a vigor, attached a solidity, which nothing could change; or else it is
necessary that the objects from which he receives impulse, should either
acquire or lose properties, according to the different states through
which his machine is successively obliged to pass; it would need that
the essences of beings should be changed in the same proportion as
his dispositions; should be submitted to the continual influence of a
thousand causes, which modify him without his knowledge, and in despite
of himself. If, at each moment, his machine undergoes changes more
or less marked, which are ascribable to the different degrees of
elasticity, of density, of serenity of the atmosphere; to the portion
of igneous fluid circulating through his blood; to the harmony of his
organs; to the order that exists between the various parts of his body;
if, at every period of his existence, his nerves have not the same
tensions, his fibres the same elasticity, his mind the same activity,
his imagination the same ardour, &c. it is evident that the same causes
in preserving to him only the same qualities, cannot always affect him
in the same manner. Here is the reason why those objects that please
him in one season displease him in another: these objects have not
themselves sensibly changed; but his organs, his dispositions, his
ideas, his mode of seeing, his manner of feeling, have changed:--such is
the source of man's inconstancy.
If the same objects are not constantly in that state competent to form
the happiness of the same individual, it is easy to perceive that they
are yet less in a capacity to please all men; or that the same happiness
cannot be suitable to all. Beings already various by their temperament,
unlike in their faculties, diversified in their organization, different
in their imagination, dissimilar in their ideas, of distinct opinions,
of contrary habits, which an infinity of circumstances, whether physical
or moral, have variously modified, must necessarily form very different
notions of happiness. Those of a MISER cannot be the same as those of
a PRODIGAL; those of a VOLUPTUARY, the same as those of one who is
PHLEGMATIC; those of an intemperate, the same as those of a rational
man, who husbands his health. The happiness of each, is in consequence
composed of his natural organization, and of those circumstances, of
those habits, of those ideas, whether true or false, that have modified
him: this organization and these circumstances, never being the same
in any two men, it follows, that what is the object of one man's views,
must be indifferent, or even displeasing to another; thus, as we
have before said, no one can be capable of judging of that which may
contribute to the felicity of his fellow man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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